Transformers: Bad PR in disguise

The Transformers movie teaser trailer went live today. I know, I know, you’re asking what this has to do with PR and social media.

Apparently traffic to the official website crashed it for a while but some bright spark, with a laptop vastly superior to the Toshiba Satellite A60 I’m using, ripped the video and posted it to YouTube.

Which begs the question “why didn’t Dream Works and Paramount just post it onto YouTube themselves?” Especially as the website doesn’t offer any more content than is in the teaser.

It would save them bandwidth and create a community around what, at the moment, is a movie targeted at a very niche demograph. Namely men aged 20 – 35 with slight geek tendencies.

Exactly the sort of people who use the internet an awful lot and will evangelize the movie through their own online presence.

If people have to go to YouTube to look at a ripped off version of the trailer, their first experience or contact point with the product will be less than stellar.

Why not post the trailer, in the highest possible video quality so that people can then embed the video in their own blogs and hey presto, you have a passionate, empowered and mobilized community. People can wax lyrical about what should be a pretty bloody cool movie and then embed a high resolution video to show their community what they’re talking about.

I’m not saying that every movie has to be Snakes on a Plane in terms of fan interaction, but giving potentially paying customers some free, bonus, product would go a long way to increasing the movie’s appeal.

**Update** David Armano over at Logic + Emotion talks about the art of using movie trailers to create engaging stories for customers. Check it out

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Everything posted on this blog is my personal opinion and does not necessarily represent the views of my employer or its clients. DDB is a global agency so any mention of any organisation could be a conflict of interests but not one that I can disclose.